No sooner had I sat down to write this article, a paean of praise for how well the economy had performed in 2014, than the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street lobbed a small spanner in the works by downgrading its 2015 growth forecast a few notches from 3.1% to 2.9% and its 2016 forecast from 2.8% to 2.6%.

But somehow I doubt whether this news will have done much to spoil Chancellor George Osborne’s Christmas, especially as it was accompanied by other figures that showed unemployment tumbling again between July and September and real wages starting to outstrip inflation and looking set to do so through 2015.

If you’d offered that set of figures to the Chancellor at the beginning of this year, I reckon he’d have bitten your arm off.